


Lean on Me

by sabraneadaz



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gallifrey, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Post-Episode: s12e03 Orphan 55, Pre-Relationship, Talking, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabraneadaz/pseuds/sabraneadaz
Summary: '“Are you disappointed?” She had to ask. “That I ran?”'(After Orphan 55 Yaz and the Doctor talk. The Doctor gives some answers.)
Relationships: The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 13
Kudos: 113





	Lean on Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Lean on Me by Bill Withers.  
> Set post - Orphan 55.
> 
> Hope you enjoy <3

Sitting like this on the threshold of the TARDIS was something that seemed to calm the Doctor nowadays. In the past she’d often done it, just reclining with her head tilted back against the wood, foot pressing against the other side, and one foot dangling down into the comforting eternity of space. But now she found comfort there, of a kind, whenever her fam were away or sleeping. She would sometimes put the TARDIS in a slow orbit around the Earth, opposite to its rotation, and sit and watch until her head felt clearer.

This time she was preoccupied. Guilt and shame weighed her down, and she focussed on those emotions only because she couldn’t stand to look deeper and confront what really roiled below the surface. Her head lolled against the doorframe, resting against the hard edge of the door where it flattened back against the TARDIS. The stars in front of her hung in the blackness, rotating, spinning, glinting their starlight across space.

The Doctor felt Yaz beside her before she heard her.

“What are you doing out here?” Yaz asked, voice hushed.

“Just getting some air.”

Yaz huffed a laugh, and the Doctor turned to look at her. She was still in her jeans and her hair was pulled back, despite everyone else having gone to sleep a while back. She’d wrapped a large woollen shawl around her shoulders though, and as the Doctor watched she pulled it tighter around her chest as if against a chill.

“Budge over.”

The Doctor brought her outstretched leg up and tucked it under her, making room for Yaz to sit beside her. They were a mirror; bodies facing each other, legs tucked beneath them and dangling into the expanse of space, faces gazing out at the stars suspended before them.

“Where are we?”

“Alpha Centauri,” the Doctor replied.

“I’ve heard of that. It’s close to Earth, right? But I thought it was just one star.”

“It looks like just one star from Earth, but it’s actually a triple star system.” She pointed away from the two blazing stars in front of them. “The third star, Proxima Centauri, is somewhere over there, but these two are the main ones. They’ve each got planets orbiting them, like your Earth orbits your sun, but they’re also locked in this eternal orbit around each other. Their gravitational forces keep them together, but also apart.” Her voice took on that joyful tone she had whenever she could share the beauty of the universe with someone, but she still felt subdued with the weight of her thoughts.

“It’s beautiful,” Yaz said. They both gazed out at the expanse of space before them. The two stars burning bright before them and multitudes of bright lights clustered around them and stretching beyond their sight.

“Can’t sleep?” The Doctor asked.

“No. You?”

“Don’t need as much sleep as you lot.”

Yaz didn’t reply to that, and the silence hung between them for a few minutes.

“I can’t stop thinking about it. The future.” Yaz swallowed. “How the Earth is gonna end up like that.”

The Doctor turned to face her, and Yaz met her eyes. They were wide and open, and the Doctor could see the despair in them. She was caught off guard by it. She’d underestimated Yaz’s pokerface.

“That’s only one future,” she replied. “Just one path the Earth could take.” She leaned forwards, making sure she held Yaz’s attention. “Don’t lose hope, Yaz.”

“How do you know?” Yaz asked.

“Everything is subject to change, Yaz. Every decision you make affects the future in some way. Time is always in flux. Things like climate change, or wars, or technology, they’re not on a set path.”

A crease appeared between Yaz’s eyebrows. “Then how can you travel through time like you do without worrying that it’ll cause, I dunno, a war or something?”

The Doctor frowned, and she spoke slowly, as if tasting the words. “It’s different for me. When I step out of the TARDIS, I don’t just see –feel – what’s around me. I can feel Time. Like, I can see how that place and time fit into the universe, and what events and choices led it to exist and what events and choices lead to its future. Every single place in the universe is connected through this web-“ she paused, frustrated, “-no, that’s not right, like, I dunno -like space!”

She grinned, and she gestured out beyond the TARDIS.

“Space is infinite. It doesn’t have an edge. Time is the same! All these potentialities, all these events and connections and parallels weave together and stretch out across all dimensions, and in the TARDIS I can travel through the space between them.”

When the Doctor came back to herself she saw that Yaz was staring at her, a quirk of amusement at her mouth.

“Sounds exhausting,” she grinned.

“Sometimes,” the Doctor conceded. “Energising, mostly.”

“So, when we land somewhere, it’s like co-ordinates on a map for you?”

“That’s too static. It’s like a feeling, being able to situate yourself in Time in flux, being in flux yourself.”

Yaz broke eye contact.

The Doctor held her hand out. “I can show you, if you like?”

Yaz considered her for a moment and then shook her head, still smiling slightly. “Not now. But…maybe later. Seriously.”

The Doctor matched her smile and let her hand drop to her knee, sitting back.

There was a weighted silence again. The Doctor could sense the thoughts running through Yaz’s head, buzzing like a swarm and resting heavy on her heart.

“Doctor…” Yaz began, slowly. “I need to know, and I think Ryan and Graham deserve to know too. Who is the Master? Really?”

The Doctor swallowed and looked down at her hand, fingers picking at her trousers. “It’s complicated,” she dismissed.

Yaz was irritated. “We’ve travelled with you for a while now, Doctor, and you’ve barely told us anything about yourself. If there’s some maniac trying to kill you, and us, then we need to know about it. You can’t keep this stuff from us.”

The Doctor met her eyes again. Yaz had the bearing of a police officer in that moment. Determined, and not going to take no for an answer.

“It’s a long story.” The Doctor warned.

Yaz’s face softened and the amused smile was back. “We’ve got time.”

The Doctor smiled again sadly. “He wasn’t trying to kill me.”

“He looked pretty serious from where I was standing,” Yaz said in disbelief.

“Okay, well, yeah he was trying to kill me, but not really. He was giving me a message.”

Yaz waited, but when the Doctor didn’t elaborate she urged her on. “Go on. What’s the message?”

The Doctor exhaled, and was mortified at how shakily the breath came out. She gritted her teeth and reined herself back in. She wasn’t going to break down in front of Yaz, not now. “I don’t know.”

Yaz sighed, and the Doctor felt the distance between them yawn open.

“He’s a Time Lord,” the Doctor said quickly, warring with herself. “Like me.” She paused again. She wanted to tell Yaz, to confide in someone, and she couldn’t let Yaz to pull away from her, let their friendship grow even more brittle than it had since Orphan 55. “He had a message from Gallifrey.”

“Well,” Yaz replied, trying to puzzle out a solution, “can’t you just go back to Gallifrey and find out what it is?”

“It’s gone.”

“What?”

“Gallifrey.”

“What do you mean it’s gone?” Yaz asked, her voice suddenly soft. She leant in closer to the Doctor.

“I went back there after everything with the Kasaavins,” the Doctor admitted. She was staring wide-eyed and glassy at the stars before her, but she couldn’t see them. Her vision was full of red suns and flames. “It was burning. The whole planet. Everything on fire.” Her voice was haunted, but she could barely hear it. “And this time it’s really gone. No coming back.”

Yaz was careful when she spoke next. “This time?”

The Doctor snapped out of it and took a deep breath. She noted how Yaz had come nearer, and she was grateful for the closeness.

“There was a war a long, long time ago. Between the Time Lords and another species. No-one won that war, Yaz. It was carnage. Destruction beyond anything anyone had ever seen before. And I ran away. I was a deserter, I suppose. I stole the TARDIS and I fled, and for a long time I thought I was the only one who survived.”

They were quiet again for a moment. The Doctor could sense Yaz thinking. She considered Yaz for a moment; she was young, yes, but she was a police officer, and her ambition on the force was only matched by her sense of right and wrong, and her conviction.

“Are you disappointed?” She had to ask. “That I ran?”

Yaz sighed. “No, Doctor. After seeing Earth like that… I think anyone would do the same.” She still sounded uncertain, and the Doctor felt her hearts sink.

“It was cowardly, I know. I left my planet to the mercy of the war, to a species who can’t understand even the idea of mercy.” Her face screwed up in anger and she bowed her head.

“But they weren’t destroyed,” Yaz reminded her.

“No. It’s…complicated. Gallifrey exists outside of time, sort of. In a kind of stasis. Time still moves in Gallifrey but its separate, and I managed to fix them there in this bubble. There are certain events,” she continued, getting frustrated, “certain things which can’t be changed, fixed events that will happen no matter what, and the Time War is one of them. But Gallifrey’s fate wasn’t fixed, not exactly.”

“So you saved them,” Yaz said, and the Doctor nodded, accepting the idea for now, not wanting to clarify to Yaz the years she spent having condemned Gallifrey to death.

“I’m so sorry, Doctor.” Yaz said, and the Doctor watched as she put her hand on top of hers where it rested on her knee. The Doctor turned her hand over so they could squeeze each other palm to palm, and the touch gave her the strength to continue.

“The Master was my best friend when we were young. We met as children and went to the Academy together. But something went wrong. He looked into the time vortex, and no-one, Yaz, _no-one_ should look directly into the time vortex. There’s a danger in that sort of power and it’s impossible to harness.” She closed her eyes again and thought of Rose, consuming the heart of the TARDIS, thought of the Master and the thrumming drumbeat of two hearts plaguing them both through time. “When I found out he’d survived too I-“

The Doctor had to stop again as her face creased up. Her voice was shaking now and she clutched Yaz’s hand in hers.

“He did it, didn’t he?” Yaz asked, a steely anger settling in her tone. “He destroyed Gallifrey.”

“He said he found out something, something important. Something worth razing Gallifrey to the ground.” Helplessness and anger thrummed through her and she felt her hearts beating furiously in her chest.

And yet…despite her anger, her grief, she still felt the need to rationalise it, to understand.

“You’ve got to understand, Yaz. The Time Lords were a powerful species. They were known and often feared across the universe. And the Master had more reason than many to revile and suspect them. Whatever he found out, I need to know.”

Yaz nodded beside her. “You’ve got us, Doctor. We’re your friends. Your _fam_. We want to help you, but we can’t do that unless you tell us what’s going on. You need to tell Graham and Ryan all this too.”

The Doctor nodded. “I wanted to leave the past in the past, that’s why I didn’t tell you any of this.”

“But time doesn’t work that way, does it?” Yaz replied, a thread of black humour in her tone.

The Doctor huffed in response and squeezed her hand again.

“Doctor… when we landed on Orphan 55, you knew it was Earth, didn’t you?”

“I’m sorry.”

Yaz shook her head, sighing. “No, it’s okay. I understand.”

Their eyes met again, and the Doctor felt something ease between them, some tension that had distanced them since Orphan 55 had loosened, and the brush of Yaz’s thumb over her wrist assured her that they were okay.

“I’m lucky to have you, Yaz.”

Yaz broke out into a proper grin at that, and she shifted so she could lean against the Doctor, shoulder to shoulder. They sat, hands clasped, heads together, looking out at the stars in their distant dance below them.

**Author's Note:**

> like always, i didn't bother editing and this is the first draft posted straight out my brain
> 
> yaz and the doctor love each other and i love comments ;) <3 
> 
> find me on tumblr at [folieassdeux](https://folieassdeux.tumblr.com)


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